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Modelling casing wear at doglegs by incorporating alternate accumulative

wear

Article  in  Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering · May 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.petrol.2018.05.009

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Modelling Casing Wear at Doglegs by Incorporating Alternate

1
2
3
Accumulative Wear
4
5 Hao Yua,b, Arash Dahi Taleghania, Zhanghua Lianb
6
a
7 John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University,
8 University Park, PA 16802, USA
9 b
10 State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu,
11 610500, China
12
13
14
15
16 Abstract. In some situations while drilling through severe doglegs, drill strings are inevitably
17
18 touching the inner wall of casing, which may wear casing harshly. For instance, this is a frequent
19
20
21 problem in wells drilled in Bohai Bay basin in East China. In large dogleg sections of the well,
22
23
24 casing is subjected to a dual-wear accumulation contributed by the tool joint and drill pipe (alternate
25
26
27 wearing). Nonplanar geometry of the hole and complex geometry of the rotating drill pipe may add
28
29 to the complexity of the wear process. Here, we propose a mathematical model to calculate the loss
30
31
32 of wall thickness of the casing due to the dual wear. A finite element model is developed to
33
34
35 incorporate wearing of the casing alternating between the tool joint and the drill pipe. Arbitrary
36
37
38 Lagrange-Eulerian (ALE) adaptive meshing and remapping technique is utilized to specify the
39
40 ablation velocity vectors at the inner casing surface. Our numerical results show that the dual wear
41
42
43 contributions and ever changing contact geometry in alternate wearing intensifies the rate of the
44
45
46 casing wear 150% faster than that of the single wear models. Additionally, the curvature at point
47
48
49 with maximum wear depth has been found to significantly impact the maximum stress of worn
50
51 casing. This paper provides an accumulative wear model for accurate prediction of the casing wear
52
53
54 and its residual strength before running the casing through the dogleg section.
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57
Key words: Directional drilling; doglegs; casing wear; dual-wear contribution
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61 1
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 1. Introduction
1
2 In recent years, drilling directional and horizontal wells with complicated trajectories and large
3
4
5 doglegs have become a common practice especially for exploration and development of
6
7
8 unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs. However, directional drilling has also been used for various
9
10 purposes such as drilling relief wells, drilling multiple wells from a single pad, or sidetracking from
11
12
13 the wells with fishing problems. Therefore, the increasing complexities of directional wells escalate
14
15
16 the potential risks for casing integrity, which may lead to well leakage or even well plugging and
17
18
19 abandonment before starting production. Therefore, accurate prediction of the casing wear in large
20
21
doglegs can be critical to save the well and avoid unnecessary costly aftermaths.
22
23
24 Bradley et al. (1975) was one of the early references that documented the severe casing wear
25
26
27 problem in directional wells, and conducted casing wear experiments under different operational
28
29
30 conditions. Through the laboratory and field studies, the rotation of drill string is identified as the
31
32
major reason for casing wear, and wear volume may obviously increase due to the concentrated
33
34
35 contact loads in the doglegs. Best (1986) classified casing wear caused by drill string rotation as
36
37
38 typical adhesive wear and abrasive wear. Through lab testing in field conditions, Best proposed that
39
40
41 smooth, round and uniform surface of tool joint hardfacing may help to achieve a maximum contact
42
43
44
area at minimum contact stress. Additionally, soft solid particles of drill mud may form a layer in
45
46 the tool joint/casing contact region to avoid the metal-to-metal contact. White and Dawson (1987)
47
48
49 used the full-scale wear-test machine to conduct the casing wear experiment for different steel
50
51
52 grades, drilling fluid properties and contact loads. He proposed a linear casing wear-efficiency
53
54
55
model that is based on the frictional work loss of the casing metal during the wear process. After
56
57 475 times eight-hour casing wear tests, Hall et al. (1994, 2005) proposed the concept of contact
58
59
60 pressure threshold, which means that the casing wear may be sufficiently self-limiting unless the
61 2
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 contact pressure threshold (CPH) is reached. He concludes that higher CPH values may imply
1
2 shallow ultimate wear groove depth. However, CPH is hard to be predicted and controlled due to
3
4
5 the ever changing complicated contact geometry.
6
7
8 Han et al. (2003) simulated the casing stress re-distribution by considering simplifying
9
10 assumptions like uniform-thickness wear model, eccentric cylinder wear model and crescent-shaped
11
12
13 wear model. Gao et al. (2010) used analytical methods to demonstrate the impact of different-sized
14
15
16 drill strings on the casing wear and discussed three possible forms of the casing wear groove, i.e.
17
18
19 single wear groove, sharp crescent-shaped and blunt crescent-shaped wear grooves. Later, on the
20
21
basis of the minimum energy of the wellbore path, Kumar et al. (2013) proposed a combined
22
23
24 “wear-energy” model to estimate the casing wear in curved sections of the wellbore to determine
25
26
27 the wear volumes of casing by the various curvature and torsion model. They showed that the
28
29
30 wellbore torsion was found to have a significant impact on the casing-wear downhole, while the
31
32
effect of drill pipe on casing wear was not taken into account. Then, Kumar and Samuel (2014,
33
34
35 2015) argued that casing wear model should be developed not only for static wear conditions, but
36
37
38 also for the operation parameters such as rotary speed, vibration and buckling of drill strings on the
39
40
41 casing wear. They showed that using the eccentric cylinder model would lead to more extensive
42
43
44
wear in comparison to the crescent-shaped model. Lin et al. (2015) presented a new algorithm for
45
46 calculating the residual collapse strength of the worn casing by incorporating the ovality of inner
47
48
49 wall and non-uniform wear due to the casing defects. More recently, Yu et al. (2016a, 2016b)
50
51
52 proposed a numerical model of dynamic casing wear in a directional well accounting for the
53
54
55
anisotropic tectonic stresses. Vavasseur et al. (2016) found the torque, drag and buckling of drill
56
57 string could make the pipe body and tool joint contact with the casing inner wall respectively, both
58
59
60 of which contributed to the casing wear and caused the complex wear in the casing inner wall. Later,
61 3
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65
 Aichinger et al. (2016) verified Vavasseur’s argument through field data using multiple-arm caliper
1
2 Log.
3
4
5 Despite fundamental studies of the casing wear conducted in the past 40 years, drilling
6
7
8 multilateral, ultra-deep as well as extended-reach wells, which significantly complicates casing
9
10 wear require a more sophisticated wear model. In the large dogleg section of these wells, stiff
11
12
13 straight drill string should deform to fit the borehole trajectory, which leads to its complicated
14
15
16 contact geometry with the casing. In this case, not only tool joint but also drill pipe can be rubbed
17
18
19 against the casing surface due to the bending and/or buckling of the drill string by axial compressive
20
21
loads. In that case, using simplified wear models like eccentric-cylinders (Dou et al., 2010; Chen et
22
23
24 al., 2015; Lin et al., 2016) may overestimate the residual strength of the casing. In addition, the
25
26
27 anisotropic tectonic stresses effect makes it more complex to predict the wear condition and its
28
29
30 residual strength.
31
32
33
2. Alternate Complex Casing Wear
34
35 The common approach to analyze the casing wear is simply the uniform loss of the casing thickness,
36
37
38 as shown in Fig. 1a. Then, the remaining collapse and burst strength of casing could be calculated
39
40
41 following the API 5C3 standard based on the remaining thickness (American Petroleum Institute,
42
43
44
1994). However, this uniform-wear assumption may severely underestimate the remaining strength
45
46 of eccentrically worn casing. Hence, many efforts have been focused on improving the casing wear
47
48
49 model by primarily two basic models: first, the single crescent-shaped wear model (Fig. 1b), which
50
51
52 considers only the interaction of the casing inner wall with the tool joint (Song, 1992; Gao et al.,
53
54
55
2010; Lin et al., 2015;); and second, the eccentric cylinder wear model, which simplifies the
56
57 crescent shape to a pipe with geometric eccentricity (Fig. 1c). (Dou et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2016;
58
59
60 Zhang et al., 2016). However, it is known that the pipe body of drill string may partly or completely
61 4
62
63
64
65
 touch the inner wall of the casing as it is under axial compressional loading especially at the dogleg
1
2 section as shown in Fig. 2 (see for example Paslay et al., 1991; Vavasseur et al., 2016; Huang et al.,
3
4
5 2017).
6
7
8
9
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13
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19
20
21
22
23 Fig. 1. Diagrams of conventional casing wear geometries
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35
36
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38
39
40
41
42
43
Fig. 2. Schematics of a drill string touching the casing through a dogleg section.
44
45
46 The contact pattern for the drill string is assumed to occur at a specific point based on the
47
48
49 assumption of small deflection of drill string. Therefore, we assume the deflection is so small that
50
51
52 the buckled drill string cannot touch the casing elsewhere except the lower side of wellbore.
53
54 Based on the assumption of drilling string buckling mentioned above, drill pipe comes into
55
56
57 contact with specific wear location where the tool joint has already contacted with casing and
58
59
60 caused prior wear. Then tool joint comes into contact with the worn place again and continues to
61 5
62
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65
 repeat the interacting process with the existing wear. Hence, the casing wear in the large dogleg
1
2 section is actually a round-and-round losing process of alternate accumulating wear contributed by
3
4
5 the tool joint and the drill pipe, instead of the conventional assumption of tool joint-contributed
6
7
8 single wear, as shown in Fig. 3.
9
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Fig. 3. Diagrams of revolving accumulative wear geometry in a large dogleg section.
30
31
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33 As demonstrated in Fig. 3, the alternate accumulative wear process can be decomposed into
34
35 three basic cycles: (1) Assuming the tool joint initially contacts with the casing inner wall, casing is
36
37
38 worn into a single crescent-shaped groove, as shown in the yellow area, (2) Drill pipe contacts with
39
40
41 the casing inner wall, and a smaller crescent-shaped groove is generated by drill pipe based on the
42
43
44 initial wear, as marked in Fig. 3. (3) Next tool joint comes into contacting with the worn area, and
45
46
casing will be first worn on the borders of smaller crescent and the overall maximum casing wear
47
48
49 depth will not increase unless the remaining area is totally worn off, as marked in Fig. 3b.
50
51
52 For the first wearing cycle, the depth and width of initial casing wear can be calculated as
53
54
55 , (1)
56
57
58 (2)
59
60
61 6
62
63
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65
 where is the maximum depth of initial casing wear; is the width of initial casing wear;
1
2 represents the outside radius of tool joint; represents the inside radius of casing; stands for
3
4
5 the eccentricity of tool joint and casing center. Hence, the crescent-shaped area of casing wear
6
7
8 contributed by tool joint can be calculated as
9
10
11
12
13 . (3)
14
15
16 For the second wearing cycle, the depth and width of casing wear can be calculated as
17
18
19 (4)
20
21
22 . (5)
23
24
25
26 where is the maximum depth of drill pipe and casing wear; is the width of drill pipe and
27
28 casing wear; represents the outside radius of drill pipe, represents the inside radius of
29
30
31 casing, stands for the eccentricity of tool joint and casing center, m. Hence, the smaller
32
33
34 crescent-shaped area contributed by drill pipe can be calculated as
35
36
37
38
39 (6)
40
41
42 For the third wearing cycle, the overall maximum casing wear depth will not increase unless
43
44
45 the remaining area is totally worn off. The critical wear area can be calculated as
46
47 , (7)
48
49
50 , (8)
51
52
53
54 (9)
55
56
57 where is critical wear eccentricity, is critical width of casing wear, is the whole crescent
58
59
60 shaped area of casing wear by second-time tool joint, is critical wear area.
61 7
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65
 As the next drill pipe reaches the wear zone, a new round of wear cycle starts and continues to
1
2 repeat these three basic cycles until wear process is over or the casing is worn out. Because the
3
4
5 contact area of the drill string and the casing evolves nonlinearly with the drilling process, the
6
7
8 effective contact pressure on the casing inner wall will also change continuously; hence, the
9
10 practical wear loss and depth of each cyclic process are different with each other. Considering the
11
12
13 anisotropic tectonic stresses interaction makes the alternate wear process very complicated to be
14
15
16 solved analytically.
17
18
19 3. Force Analysis of Drill String
20
21
In the curved section of a directional well, due to complex well trajectory and drill string bending
22
23
24 and/or buckling, the force status of drill string appears more complicated than that in a vertical well.
25
26
27 Some basic assumptions were made in the derivation: (1) Drill string is considered as an elastic
28
29
30 beam, (2) The distance between two consecutive tool joints is assumed to be much less than the
31
32
radius of curvature of the curved sections, hence, the relatively small deflection assumption is
33
34
35 satisfied, (3) The curved borehole axis is assumed to have a fixed curvature, (4) The magnitude of
36
37
38 the axial force is assumed to be constant that is always compressive. The direction of the axial force
39
40
41 is perpendicular to the cross-section of the drill string and (5) The direction of the contact force on
42
43
44
the casing applied by drill string is assumed to be always perpendicular to the lower side of
45
46 wellbore.
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49
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61 8
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 1
2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22 Fig. 4. Projected components of a 3D well trajectory on inclination and normal planes
23
24
25 Based on the above assumptions, equivalent beam-column method is developed to calculate
26
27
28
drilling string forces. The deviation angle α, azimuth angle φ and well depth s are used to describe
29
30 the well trajectory. β in the Fig. 4 is the angle between the deviation and inclination planes. The
31
32
33 relationship of the angle β, the deviation angle α and azimuth angle φ is defined as
34
35 , (10)
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37
38 Projected components of the well trajectory on inclination and normal planes near reference
39
40
41 point-P are shown in Fig. 4. The well curvature near the reference point-P can be calculated as
42
43
44 , (11)
45
46 Where the projected components of well curvature on the plane O-yz and the plane O-xz can be
47
48
49 calculated as
50
51 , (12)
52
53
54
55 Using Eqs. (11-12), the 3D well problem can be decomposed into two 2D problems on well
56
57
58 inclination and normal planes respectively.
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60
61 9
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 On the plane O-yz, the governing equation of drill string deformation can be written as the
1
2 fourth-order linear differential equation
3
4
5 , (13)
6
7 where E is the elasticity modulus of the casing, I is its second moment of area, EI represents the
8
9
10 flexural rigidity of drill string, F represents the axial compressive load, q stands for the gravity load
11
12
13 of the drill string per unit length, α is the well inclination angle at point-P, rad; m1 indicates the
14
15
component of distributed contact force between drill string and casing on the plane O-yz; y1
16
17
18 indicates the lateral displacement of drill string axis with respect to the wellbore axis tangent on
19
20
21 inclination plane.
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44 Fig. 5. Equivalent additional tubular string weight based on beam-column model
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46
47 As shown in Fig. 5, to a curved section, the differential between borehole axis P-s and
48
49
50 borehole tangent P-z can be approximated as
51
52 (14)
53
54 Substitute in Eq. (14) into the Eq. (13), we can obtain
55
56
57
58 (15)
59
60
61 10
62
63
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65
 where y2 is the lateral displacement of the drill string axis to the borehole axis.
1
2 According to Eq (15), is the additional load caused by wellbore curvature on the plane
3
4
5 O-yz, and is equivalent lateral loads in the plane O-yz. Hence, the
6
7
8 deformation problem of drill string with lateral string weight in curved sections is
9
10 equivalent to that with lateral string weight in horizontal wellbores.
11
12
13 On the plane O-xz, the governing equation of drill string deformation can be written as the
14
15
16 fourth order linear differential equation
17
18
19
20 , (16)
21
22
23
where m2 is the component of distributed contact force between drill string and casing on the plane
24
25 O-yz. Similar to Eq. (14), the deviation of the borehole axis and its tangent on the plane O-xz is
26
27
28 (17)
29
30
31
32
Using Eq. (17), the Eq. (16) can be simplified as
33
34
35
, (18)
36
37
38 where is the equivalent string weight on the plane O-xz.
39
40 Combining components of the total equivalent string weight of the drill string from Eqs. (15)
41
42
43 and (18) can be written as
44
45
46 , (19)
47
48
49 where is the equivalent string weight in the curved section.
50
51
52
According to Eq. (19), the contact force of tool joint and drill pipe through point-P are
53
54
55 (20)
56
57
58 (21)
59
60
61 11
62
63
64
65
 where and stand for the contact force of tool joint and drill pipe on casing; is the
1
2 distance between two consecutive tool joints; and represent the effective contact length of
3
4
5 tool joint and drill pipe on casing.
6
7
8 4. Numerical Simulation
9
10 Based on what explained in previous sections, a case analysis is conducted for the casing wear in
11
12
13 well X-3 located in Eastern China. According to caliper measurements conducted after drilling, the
14
15
16 maximum wear occurred at 2562m, where the maximum principal stress is 46MPa in the E-W
17
18
19 direction, and the minimum principal stress is 32MPa in the N-S direction (as shown in Fig. 6) The
20
21
well deviation angle, at this point is 35.86°, with the well deviation rate of 8.77°/25m, and the
22
23
24 azimuth deviation rate is 2.43°/25m. The length of each pipe string is 10.36m and, and the length of
25
26
27 the tool joint is 0.4318m. The average rotary speed of the drill string was 80r/min. The elastic
28
29
30 modulus of the formation rock is 7.2GPa and Poisson’s ratio is 0.30. Mechanical properties of the
31
32
drill string, casing and cement are shown in Table 1.
33
34
35
36 Table 1. Material parameters used in numerical simulations
37
38 Outer diameter Thickness Elastic modulus Yield strength
39 Material Steel grade Poisson's ratio
40 (mm) (mm) (GPa) (MPa)
41
42
43 Cement sheath - 311.1 33.3 9.8 0.25 -
44
45 Casing P110 244.5 11.05 210.0 0.30 758.0
46
47
48 Drill pipe S135 127 9.19 210.0 0.30 931.0
49
50
Tool Joint S135 168 20.5 210.0 0.30 931.0
51
52
53 A two dimensional finite element model is developed to consider elastic and plastic
54
55
56
deformations of casing, drilling pipe and formation rock (see Fig. 6). The formation rock, cement
57
58 sheath, and casing are presented with linear elements (about 20,000 nodes and 20,000 elements).
59
60
61 12
62
63
64
65
 The drill pipe and tool joint are assumed to be rigid bodies because their hardness is far larger than
1
2 the hardness of the casing material. The well pressure of 23.5 MPa is applied in the interior face of
3
4
5 the casing.
6
7
8
9
10
11
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13
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20
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22
23
24
25
26
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28 Fig. 6. Finite element model under anisotropic tectonic stresses
29
30 The model edges are constrained and tectonic stresses are assigned as initial stresses into the
31
32
33 model. According to previous studies (Yu et al., 2016b), the most severe condition of casing wear
34
35
36 occurs when the normal of initial contact surface becomes parallel to the direction of the minimum
37
38
39
principal stress. Therefore, we adopt this severe condition as the benchmark to study casing
40
41 strength.
42
43
44 We considered 5500 increments (equivalent time) here to simulate dynamic alternate
45
46
47 accumulation of casing wear during drilling, and each increment (equivalent 1-minute rotation)
48
49
50
includes one-time drill pipe or tool joint wearing casing process. Because a drill pipe is much longer
51
52 than a tool joint, contact time of pipe with casing is longer than the contact time of tool joint with
53
54
55 casing. Hence, in order to reasonably compare different wear processes, we set the rotatory speed of
56
57
58 drill pipe per increment as 10 times as the initial value to shorten the contact time to one tenth of the
59
60
61 13
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65
 initial time period. The resultant alternate loading history of the drill pipe and the tool joint, and
1
2 their corresponding rotary speeds experienced by an arbitrary point-P of the casing can be seen in
3
4
5 Fig. 7.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23 Fig. 7. Alternate loading history and boundary conditions. The red curve represents the
24 periodically alternate side contact force through point-P from drill pipe or tool joint in the finite
25 element model. The blue curve is the periodically alternate rotary speed of drill pipe or tool joint
26
27
28
29
It can be seen that the curves can be divided into several cyclic a-b-c-d stages. The section ‘ab’
30
31 is the stage of casing wear contributed by drill pipe, and the load is the contact force from drill
32
33
34 pipe ( ). The rotary speed is that of drill pipe ( ). The section ‘bc’ is the stage of
35
36
37 casing wear contributed by the tool joint, and the load through point-P is the side contact force
38
39
40
from tool joint ( ). The rotary speed is that of tool joint ( ). The section ‘cd’ is
41
42 the stage of casing wear contributed by drill pipe in the next round.
43
44
45 Substitute well deviation angle, well deviation rate, azimuth rate and dimension of drill string
46
47
48 of X-3 well into Eq. (20) - (21), assuming the value of axial compression F = 30 t (as shown in Fig.
49
50
51 5), the side contact force of drill pipe and tool joint to casing can be calculated as Np = 2.01 kN/m
52
53 and Nj = 50.9 kN/m respectively. The rotary speed of drill pipe and tool joint are np = 800
54
55
56 r/increment and nj = 80 r/increment respectively.
57
58
59
60
61 14
62
63
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65
 4.1 Implementation of Dynamic Wear Process
1
2 Based on the wear-efficiency model proposed by White and Dawson (1987), a portion of friction
3
4
5 work is transformed into heat generation, and the other portion leads to wear. The wear volume can
6
7
8 be calculated as
9
10 (22)
11
12 (23)
13
14 where is wear volume; is the wear coefficient; is the friction work; is the friction
15
16
17 coefficient. is the sliding distance; is rotary speed; is the wear time. Casing wear is a
18
19
20 time-dependent process due to the ever changing contact geometry and time-varying contact
21
22
pressure. Hence, Eq (22) can be considered as
23
24
25
(24)
26 (25)
27
28
29 where is cross-sectional area of contact geometry; is the wear depth at an arbitrary
30
31
32 pointM within ; is the sliding distance along the traveled path ; is the contact
33
34 pressure at this point.
35
36
37 Based on the above equations, the casing wear process can be regarded as the gradual abrasion
38
39
40 accumulation of its surface material. We used a user–defined subroutine in ABAQUS to simulate
41
42
43 the wear, which is used to specify the ablation velocity vectors at the nodes that are on the casing
44
45
inner wall. Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler (ALE) adaptive mesh smoothing is applied to adjust nodes in
46
47
48 the interior side of the casing to maintain a good mesh quality in the process of simulation. The
49
50
51 dynamic accumulative process of casing wear can be described as periodically cyclic procedures,
52
53
54 and every cycle includes: ⅰ) solution of the contact problem using the finite element model to
55
56
calculate the contact pressure and the sliding distance of each node of contact regions, ⅱ)
57
58
59 computation of wearing rates to calculate the wear depth of each node, and ⅲ) modification of
60
61 15
62
63
64
65
 casing surface geometry by a user-defined subroutine. Each wear increment is performed by
1
2 repeating the cycles listed in Fig. 8.
3
4
5
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39
40
Fig. 8. Flowchart for implementation of dynamic accumulative process of the casing wear
41
42
43
44 Based on the Eq. (25), the incremental depth of wear in the ith increment at the jth node
45
46
can be expressed as
47
48
49 , (26)
50
51 where is the total tangential displacement of ith cycle at the jth point; is the contact pressure
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54 of ith cycle at the jth point. f is the wear coefficient, 7.0537×10-13 Pa-1 for S135 pipe and P110 casing
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57 in this paper. μ is the friction coefficient, 0.3 for S135 pipe and P110 casing in this paper.
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59 Thus the cumulative wear depth of casing at the jth node is
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61 16
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 (27)

1 The vector sum for all wear surfaces is

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, (28)
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6 where j is an arbitrary point of the contact surface and is the unit vector.
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9 4.2 Simulation Results
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12 Fig. 9 shows the stress and deformation contours of an intact casing under initial anisotropic
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15 tectonic stresses. It can be observed that the displacement and stress distribution of casing presents
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18 symmetric distribution.
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Fig. 9. Stress and displacement contours of unworn casing
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40 The maximum deformation displacement is only 0.269mm, and is in the direction of the
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42 maximum principal stress. The maximum Mises stress is only 301.064 MPa, and is in the direction
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45 with the minimum principal stress. The magnitude of stress is far from P110 casing yield strength
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48 (758 MPa).
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 1
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17 Fig. 10. Contours of alternate accumulative wear model when casing has reached its yield strength
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20 Fig. 10 demonstrates stress and displacement contours based on the proposed alternate
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accumulative wear model proposed here. It takes 108.18 hours of rotation (at 80 rpm) to wear the
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25 casing down to its yield strength for the alternate complex wear. It can be seen that due to the dual
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28 wear contributions by drill pipe and tool joint, eventually the casing is worn to be a similar
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31 double-crescent shape, interacting with the anisotropic tectonic stresses. The maximum wear depth
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occurs at point-o, as show in Fig. 10b. Where the tool joint contributes most to casing wear is m-o-n
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36 segment, and the drill pipe contributes most to casing wear is p-o-q segment. When the maximum
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39 depth of alternate accumulative wear model reaches 7.908mm, the maximum Mises stress of casing
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42 occurs at the location of maximum wear depth and the Mises stress decreases progressively from
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the maximum depth to both sides. Compared with the contours of unworn casing in Fig. 9b, the
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47 maximum Mises stress of casing increases from 301 MPa to 759 MPa, and the casing entered the
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50 yield stage.
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 1
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18 Fig. 11. Contours of Drill pipe-Casing single wear model when casing has reached its yield strength
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39 Fig. 12. Contours of Tool Joint-Casing single wear model when casing has reached its yield strength
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42 In order to compare the influence of working conditions on the casing ultimate strength,
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45 numerical simulations of drill pipe-contributed single wear and tool joint-contributed single wear
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48 were conducted separately. We may compare the impact of each method based on equal drilling
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51 time. It takes 185.76 and 211.98 hours of rotation (at 80 rpm) to wear the casing down to its yield
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53 strength for drill pipe-contributed and tool joint-contributed single wear models, respectively. Stress
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56 and displacement contours of two single wears when the casing just reached the yield strength were
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59 obtained, as shown in Fig. 11 and Fig. 12. It can be seen that the casing is worn like a
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 single-crescent shape, which remains consistent with outer diameter of drill pipe or tool joint, and
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2 the maximum wear position also occurs at point-o. When the casing reaches the yield strength, the
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5 corresponding maximum wear depth of casing is 7.885mm and 8.492mm respectively for these two
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8 situations. In the drill pipe-contributed single wear model, the maximum wear depth for yield
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10 strength is almost the same as that of alternate accumulative wear model. However, the area of
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13 alternate accumulative model prone to damage is 1.26 times bigger than that of drill
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16 pipe-contributed single model. In the tool joint-contributed single wear model, the maximum wear
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19 depth for yield strength is 0.59 mm greater that of alternate accumulative wear model. It is thus
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clear that different working conditions have noticeable influence on the ultimate strength of the
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24 casing.
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 1
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21 Fig. 13. Curves of maximum wear depth with increment /time under three working conditions a) wear
22 depth over contact time; b) wear depth over drilling time
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25 Fig. 13a and 13b demonstrate maximum wear depths of casing (at point-o) over continuous
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28 contact time and versus drilling time, respectively. It can be seen from Fig. 13a that the wear rate of
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31 tool joint-induced single wear model is higher due to the larger contact force within the same
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“contact time”. However, in the field, tool joint or drill pipe cannot continuously be in contact with
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36 the casing. If we make comparison based on the contact time (Fig. 13a), we will see less induced
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39 wear by the alternate wear model, however, we need to keep in mind that in the alternate wear
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42 model, a longer contact time is anticipated, so when comparison is based on drilling time, the
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alternate wear model is more destructive. The an-bn-cn-dn stage in Fig. 13b corresponds with a-b-c-d
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47 stage of loading history curve in Fig. 7. It is observed that all the three curves in Fig. 13b manifest
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50 ladder-like rising trend, which means the maximum wear depth of casing remains a periodically
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53 steady phase instead of continuous growth in the process of casing wear. In the drill pipe induced
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single wear model, the steady phase is due to the “blank period” of wear induced by the tool joint.
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58 In the tool joint-contributed single wear model, the steady phase is due to the “blank period” of
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61 21
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 wear induced by the drill pipe. For the alternate accumulative wear model, the steady phase remains
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2 all the same due to the existing critical wear area, as discussed in Eq. (7) - (9).
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5 By comparing the three curves (Fig. 13b) within the same drilling time period, it is observed
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8 that the growth rate of alternate accumulative wear is more than 150% faster than that of the other
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10 two curves. One reason is due to the dual impacts of the drill pipe and the tool joint. Besides,
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13 another very important reason is that the variable contact geometry between the drill string and
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16 casing intensifies the contact pressure. In the early stage of the wear, the drill pipe or tool joint has
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19 mainly a point contact with the casing. The small contact area then results in high contact pressure
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21
and consequently fast wear according to Eq. (26). Then the contact pressure decreases non-linearly
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24 due to the continuously increasing contact area along with the wear process, hence, the rate of
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27 casing wear depth at point-o reduces accordingly over time. However, for the alternate
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30 accumulative wear model, the cyclic alternating between drill pipe and tool joint leads to the contact
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32
area between drill string and casing always very small. After one-time wear contribution by tool
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35 joint, the borders of previously worn casing would be worn partly or completely, which made the
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38 subsequent contact area of drill pipe and casing decrease greatly, even the point contact could again
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41 occur. It will result in increasing the contact pressure dramatically, and thus casing wear rate always
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keep fast at point-o in the whole alternate process.
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 1
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15 Fig. 14. Curves of maximum Mises stress with the wear depth under three working conditions
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18 In order to study the influence of wear depth on the maximum Mises stress under different
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21 wear conditions, curves of the maximum Mises stress versus the wear depth were obtained, as
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24 shown in Fig. 14. It can be seen that the maximum Mises stress increases continuously with the
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27 increase of wear depth in different scenarios. When the wear depth is less than half the thickness of
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29 casing wall (before A-A’ line), the maximum Mises stress approximately presents linear with the
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32 wear depth. While the wear depth is more than half the thickness of casing wall (after A-A’ line), the
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35 maximum Mises stress increases sharply with the wear depth. It indicates that under any wear
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38 condition, the maximum permissible wear depth should not exceed half the thickness of the casing.
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40 In addition, it is observed that with the same wear depth, the magnitude of maximum stress of the
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43 tool joint-contributed single wear model is always the least one, but the magnitude of maximum
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46 stress of drill pipe-contributed single wear model tends to be equal with that of alternate
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49 accumulative wear model. In order to make a more direct and clear comparison of the stress
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51 distribution at the same wear depth, the Mises stress distribution curves of 7.908mm wear depth
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54 casing (at B-B’ line) under different working conditions are calculated in Fig. 15.
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 1
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19 Fig. 15. Mises stress curves of 7.908mm wear depth casing under three working conditions
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According to Fig. 15, the maximum Mises stress of worn casing is not only related to the wear
24
25 depth, but also closely related to the curvature at point with maximum wear depth. By comparing
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28 the drill pipe-contributed single wear and alternate accumulative wear, it can be seen that the
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31 maximum Mises stresses remain almost the same because of similar wear curvature. However,
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comparing the tool joint-contributed single wear and alternate accumulative wear, the maximum
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36 Mises stress of tool joint-contributed single wear is less than that of the alternate accumulative wear
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39 due to its smaller curvature (i.e. radius of the tool-joint). It also verifies that in presence of small
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42 curvatures, simplified wear models like eccentric-cylinders can overestimate the residual strength of
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the casing. Additionally, the results show that the residual strength prediction model in a directional
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47 well should be based on the size of the drill pipe rather than that of the tool joint to achieve more
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50 conservative design for burst and collapse of casing strings in the large dogleg section.
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53 5. Conclusions
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56
This paper proposed a mechanical model for the casing wear in the dogleg section of directional
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58 wells that incorporates dual wear contributions. The proposed model is successfully implemented in
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 a commercial finite element package by developing required user-defined subroutines. The
1
2 outcomes of these simulations show that due to the complicated contact geometry in the dogleg, the
3
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5 casing wear process is mainly an alternate accumulative phenomenon that cannot be simulated
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8 correctly without considering the contributing factors of both drill pipe and tool-joints.
9
10 In conclusion, the dual wear factor makes the worn casing to be similar to the double-crescent
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13 shape instead of the single-crescent shape. Mises stress distribution of double-crescent worn casing
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16 is more concentrated near the wearing regions. Meanwhile, the dual wear factor and the revolving
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19 contact area make the wear depth at some points far greater than what single wear models show for
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21
the same rotation time interval. The difference of the depth of wear between complex model and
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24 single models is increasing over running time. Hence, the prediction for casing wear in the large
25
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27 dogleg section should be based on the proposed accumulative models to achieve a safe design. The
28
29
30 results show that the maximum Mises stress of the worn casing has different sensibilities to the
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32
residual wall thickness. While the wear depth is more than half the thickness of casing wall, the
33
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35 maximum Mises stress increases dramatically with the maximum wear depth.
36
37
38 The results also indicate that maximum stress of worn casing increases with the increasing
39
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41 worn surface curvature. Therefore, the residual strength prediction model of casing wear in the large
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44
dogleg section should be based on the size of drill pipe rather than the size of the tool joint.
45
46 Acknowledgements
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48
49 The authors are grateful to the support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC, File No.
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51 201708510125) for its contribution to this paper. The authors also thank Dr. Wenjun Huang for his
52
53 big help to this paper. Dr. Huang's email address: huangwenjun1986@126.com
54
55
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